"Thanks. That was one of the harder things I've had to do." She rubbed her lower lip. Then, "Let's give them a few more moments. Besides, I want to tell you something." He cocked his head, disliking drama.
"Iahn, I know you want me to create some route that'll connect us immediately to Deep Imaskar. But listen. The source of the attack on our city is close. And unless I miss my guess, it comes from…" the wizard pointed down the path that was blocked by a shimmering screen, blurring the image of an incredibly tall fortress tower, "… there. "That fantastic structure, my friend," explained Ususi,
"exactly matches a painting hanging in the audience chamber of the lord apprehender." "I've seen that painting. What is it?" "The Purple Palace. The ancient seat of the Imaskari Empire." Iahn blinked.
"Incredible." "A paragon of understatement. Do they train you for such subtlety?" asked Ususi. "Apparently, the entire palace was stored in the Celestial Nadir before the end of the empire. The records in Deep Imaskar assume that the palace remained in the world, buried below the shifting sands of Raurin. Turns out, it's been here all along." "It does not quite look 'here,' though," commented the vengeance taker.
Ususi's brow furrowed, and she gazed at the structure through the keystone. Still gazing through the translucent stone, she said,
"You're right. It's not. How strange!" "What?" "It has slipped into our world! It has returned…" Ususi continued to observe the structure through the lens of her keystone, apparently learning additional information through its tiny aperture, "… can it be? Yes!
It has found its original foundation. But it retains a tenuous link with the Celestial Nadir. The link is Pandorym's influence. Its psyche is entangled with something still here." "Let me take a stab-is it entangled with that?" Iahn pointed down the path to the great misshapen boulder. "Difficult to say." "Then let's find out." The vengeance taker gripped his dragonfly blade, wondering what sort of violence he could bring to bear on such a large rock. Ususi followed him. She said, "Whatever the link, Pandorym remains rooted in the palace. Which makes sense. Some of the creatures it threw at us, like the shadow eft, are remnants of a race that now exists only in the Imperial Weapons Cache. Pandorym must have released and subverted them to its own power. I wonder what else it's released." Iahn nodded as he studied the great rock, more concerned with it than Ususi's musing for the moment. The vengeance taker looked to the wizard and saw she was standing some paces back, inspecting the boulder through her keystone.
After a few moments, he grew impatient and sheathed his weapon. Then he pulled himself up onto the stone. With skill acquired during a childhood spent in a gargantuan cavern, he free-climbed the overhanging, bulging rock surface. He easily reached the lowest jagged crack in the boulder's mostly smooth surface. Iahn was somewhat familiar with geology, thanks to Deep Imaskar's location, and therefore knew a geode was a hollow, spherical rock whose cavity was lined with crystals. Some geodes were completely filled with crystals.
Those were called nodules. Gazing into the crack, Iahn thought this great boulder was completely filled with Celestial Nadir crystal, making it a nodule. But something glimmered at the nodule's center. A palely glowing blot like a luminiferous fungus, or subterranean sea shape… Then… Darkness. Blowing, howling, damp gloom. Shadows reaching like fingers… grasping. Stretching closer. Screaming…
Iahn's eyes snapped open. He lay on the path, at the nexus of the three ways. Ususi bent over him, patting his cheek and looking concerned. The two Vaelanites stood nearby, looking useless. He demanded, "Tell me what happened. I recall… a nodule?" Darkness clawed at his brain and was gone again in a flash. He clutched his head. Ususi said, "You tell us. One moment you were describing how the cavity was filled with agate. Then you screamed and fell fifteen paces without trying to catch yourself. I thought you'd been struck dead, or petrified. Then I heard you mumble about fingers. We dragged you back here. What did you see?" "Something we need to destroy." The vengeance taker tottered to his feet. Pain lanced his left shin, and his right shoulder and arm-souvenirs from the fall he couldn't remember, he supposed. He told them, "Something terrible is caught in that nodule … Pandorym, you called it? If we destroy it, we destroy the threat reaching into the world, and into Deep Imaskar." Now who was the loose-lipped one? Didn't matter. His conviction made him reckless. The one with the crystal arm stepped forward. His eyes were red, and his face tear-streaked. "Yes, let's destroy it!" "Iahn, Warian, wait.
You're only partly right. That husk of stone may-may-imprison Pandorym's body, whatever shape it truly possesses. Or it could be some other entity completely unrelated to Pandorym. The Celestial Nadir is filled with such dangerous detritus. Either way, it's important to remember that the body and mind of Pandorym were never kept in the same place-too dangerous." "Explain," he ordered. "I described before how Pandorym was a doomsday weapon the Imaskari didn't dare release. They only wanted to threaten Pandorym's release, and thus the entity's psyche was extracted from its physical shell and stored in the Imperial Weapons Cache of the Purple Palace." Ususi turned to point at the wavering facade of the palace. "Now the psyche has partly freed itself, with Shaddon's help. The mind is the only vulnerable portion of Pandorym. The body, even if that is it, is beyond my ability to affect, even if I use the keystone to scrape away the Celestial Nadir crystal that has scabbed over it. We must go to the palace, find the vessel that once contained Pandorym's psyche, and close it again." Warian asked, his face flushed, "Since Pandorym has all these servitors, why doesn't it just coerce one into fully releasing it?" Ususi said, "I'm sure Pandorym's tried that many times.
The longer we fail to contain its growing influence, the sooner it will be successful in freeing its mind from the arcane constraints that yet tether it." Iahn asked, "My duty is to return you to Deep Imaskar so you can stem the incursion. Yet you say our best hope is to enter the Weapons Cache of the Purple Palace instead of returning first to our imperiled city. Will you stake the safety of Deep Imaskar on this course of action?" "I don't see any other option. If we go to Deep Imaskar to fight whatever else Pandorym has corrupted and freed from the Weapons Cache, we'll be attacking only the symptoms. We must get to the root of the problem and restopper Pandorym's mentality before it does find a way to free its mind and reunite with its physical shell." The vengeance taker considered Ususi's words. Her assessment was probably correct. He glanced at the irregular nodule.
Darkness flashed again through his thoughts and skittered away. He'd seen something that he'd not soon forget. "Very well, Ususi," agreed Iahn. "Let's go."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The dragonet's glimmer preceded Kiril and Prince Monolith through the narrow stone corridor. They circled up, up, and up in a gyre whose eventual termination seemed unlikely. The slope was shallow at first, but progressively steepened. Every hundred paces brought them past a sealed arch. Kiril supposed these opened to the tower's core, but each was bricked over with purplish stone. Like the corridor, the sealing stones were scarred and stained by some great drowning years ago. The monotony was eventually broken by a scattering of cracked bricks that spilled into the corridor. The stones sealed an arch that had partially collapsed-centuries ago, by the look of it. Xet fluttered past the gap in the corridor without slowing. Kiril paused a moment to peer through the broken masonry. "Hey, I see light!" Monolith, bringing up the rear, said, "This tower is too large for us to explore every room, or even every floor. Nor need we, because Thormud provided Xet with a route to our objective." "What if we stumble on something useful?" "Leave it be-we have a long way to go." Kiril sniffed and lingered in the breach to see what she could. The space past the arch was a great foyer, high-beamed and supported by massive columns.